People As Places As People
by Sheer-water13
Summary: He neurotically stacked them, four letters, four universities, in a perfect collection of destroyed flora, with Midgar University on the bottom. AKUROKU
1. Chapter 1

Sorry, had to edit the first chapter! I haven't really got the hang of the whole fanfiction thing yet! It confuses this simple mind!

Anyway, just a little note of this story…one thing: I am Australian, so I think I might write about what I know, and that's solely Australian. So sorry if you don't understand anything :S let me know if you need any explanation on university, TER, whatever…yes, curse the Australian way!  
>Point two: I'm actually not really into the whole man-love thing! Gasp! But axel and roxas I love to pieces. They seem to be able to complement each other very well…and I love it…so hence…story…<br>Point three: it has mixes of final fantasy and kingdom hearts…and real world. Hopefully not in a way that is already confusing with the whole Australian thing, unless you are Australian. Ha ha, Australian shall be mentioned no more.  
>Point four: before I get into trouble…I don't own anything from square enix blah blah blah…and to be completely stereotypical…I wish I did. They have a thrilling ability of creating very beautiful people!<p>

Point five: sorry for the ending and the reviewer who pointed it out! I has removed it :D

...

"Fuck off you got 99! I didn't even think you were a smart kid!" Zexion had yelled at him, his fist striking against his shoulder. That was the general consensus with all his friends, all awestruck and surprised that Axel could even pass his Tertiary Entrance Level exams. Axel didn't get sick of it, didn't even feel offended, didn't even care when his mother blinked at him and asked him when he had started year twelve. What did he expect? This was from a person who didn't react when he came home with tattoos on his face when he was fifteen, a desperate attempt to get her attention. He could have driven nails into his skull and she would have just looked at him absentmindedly.

It took her three days to realise what it meant, and then she promptly burst into tears about how old he was, and how he was going to leave her, like Reno did.

Like their father did.

And so it started.  
>The letters from prospective universities piled up on the kitchen table, and the smell of burning in the air. Axel could only glance briefly at them before having to throw his bag down on a grey, worn chair and get into the kitchen, a pot of brown waste bubbling dangerously on the stove. Black smoke billowed up to the stained roof, around the fire alarm Axel had long before smashed with a hammer.<p>

"Fuck sake!" he snarled, burning his hand on the metal handle as he tried to pull it off the flames. And he ended up with charred, inedible chicken curry spilling across the bench top, a completely fucked pot and a blistering hand. His fists clenched as he counted slowly to ten, a stereotypical method he had employed over the years to deal with his mum's…issues. He found on the rare occasion that they actually worked for him. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of Peter Jackson Gold, Gold in more ways than one, and lit it on the burning stove before turning off the gas. He shoved the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, smoke curling from his nose and pulled out a sponge to begin cleaning the mess.

"What happened Axel?" his mum asked, shuffling into the kitchen, still wearing her pyjamas at four o'clock in the afternoon around her almost skeleton frame. Her blue eyes were wide and frightened, but she always seemed to look like a startled puppy. "I heard you swearing…"

"You left the stove on," he muttered, dumping curry in the sink and filling the pot with hot water. He closed his eyes when he heard his mother inhale sharply. He could see her, covering her mouth with a thin hand, her eyes filling up with tears, and he wasn't even facing her.

"Oh dear…oh dear…" she murmured. "I forgot! I wanted to make you something nice for your dinner! Fuck, what the fuck is wrong with me?" She muttered something under her breath that Axel couldn't make out, and then sobbed, a harsh choking sound ripping from her body. Axel cursed himself for. He should have been more fucking subtle! He dropped the cigarette in the sullied water, turning around and pulling his mum in his arms before she started striking herself with bony fists.

"It's ok, mum, it's ok," he said, pulling her tighter as she squirmed and whimpered. He shushed her, and rocked slightly. "I'm not hungry." His stomach clenched from hunger at his lie. "I had a big lunch." She smelt like pot and body odour and dirty hair. He hugged her until she quieted, and then stepped away to continue cleaning a kitchen that, no matter how hard he scrubbed with super-power bleach, never looked clean. He threw the sponge at a scurrying cockroach by the fridge.

"What did you do today?" Cassandra asked, frowning at the sponge, her fingers curling in her nightgown methodically until her knuckles turned white. Dark purple shadows under her eyes, which conflicted with skin pale almost to translucency, told him that she wasn't sleeping well again.

"I went to work. Remember I told you this morning."

"Oh of course," she stared, wide eyed and vacant as Axel opened the fridge, eyeballing the mouldy cheese he was so ravenous. There was nothing else except yoghurt looking milk and pumpkin which had grown its own ecosystem. All while the four horsemen of the apocalypse were tearing down his digestive system at the lack of available glucose. Sometimes Cassandra would snap from her reverie, go to the store and buy enough food to feed enough children in one of the Midgar orphanages.

"You have mail as well," his mother continued and pointed towards the door, before shuffling out. Completely at ease again. She was ill, mentally fucked up, and pot made it worse. It left her room stinking of cats and old socks. It left her in a mindless daze where she would reattach the hose to the sleeve of her coat and wonder why there wasn't any water.

Axel watched her, his hunger replaced with a burning he couldn't yet place. He was too young to have to deal with this. Too young to be able to understand despair.

He slammed the fridge door and made his way back to the living room. His fingers reached out towards the letters, fingering through them, coat of arms smugly staring back with their obvious pretentiousness. He scratched at the ink. Midgar University, _Adaequatio Intellectus Nostri Cum Re._

"Conformity of our minds to the fact," he quoted. "Sounds like a friggin' cult."

He neurotically stacked them, four letters, four universities, in a perfect collection of destroyed flora, with Midgar University on the bottom.

Before he could regard the symbolism of why he purposely did that, the front door slammed open and his sister filed in, her phone glued to her ear. "No you hang up." Giggle, gush, giggle, bag thrown on the couch, the scent of fairy floss perfume in the air, "Ok bye."

Axel didn't look at her. He didn't like looking at Kairi anymore. Her clothing had become too short for his comfort, afraid that if she bent over he would get a view of her barely-there-underwear. Makeup smudged around her eyes, probably another hickey on her neck from boyfriend number forty seven. Or was it thirteen again? He couldn't keep track. He felt the burning of guilt slithering through his veins for the umpteenth time today, at his prejudices that his sister was becoming a prostitute.

"Axel," she sang, slipping her phone down the front of her shirt. She had cut apart the collar to display the lace of her bra and angled collar bones. Her thin arms wrapped around his waist in a hello, before glancing around him. "The house stinks like rot!" She paused. "What's this?"

"Mail," he answered, screwing his finger into the middle of the stack, the edges of the letters crinkling upwards to engulf the digit. His sister pushed his hand away and picked one up.

Cue: Explosion.

"What the fuck Axel?" she screeched, hell cat, fire and spittle. Even her red hair seemed to stand on end. "Why the fuck did you apply for this? What the fuck am I supposed to do if you go there? Twilight Town? You selfish deadshit, leaving me here with her!"

Guilt- he could just leave her here. Despair- he was never getting out. Self-disgust- he was a deadshit.

"I haven't decided yet," he whispered, reaching out to her to stop the tears that welled up in the corner of her eyes. She had eyes like mum, while his eyes were green like their father's. Sometimes, his mum wouldn't look at him or talk to him for days because of it.

"But you applied! You fucking applied to go somewhere else and leave me here with that crazy bitch! I can't believe you would do that to me!" Kairi continued to rage. She threw the letter at him before he found the words to try and explain it to her, grabbed her bag and marched out the front door, her phone once again against her ear just like the way she had come in.

If he overlooked her egocentricity, he could tell that she was just frightened of him leaving. Or maybe he was just hoping that he heard it.


	2. Chapter 2

So here's chapter two! Thanks for the reviews much appreciated!  
>yeah you have to get through the chapters before roxas comes in…but I hope it keeps you interested. Maaaaybe next chapter!<p>

I don't own anything. Peace

Contains swearing

Enjoy!

…..

"_You have to pay for the sins I have created."_

That was the last thing Van has said to him, his hand resting on his forehead. It was two o'clock in the morning and Axel was still groggy from sleep, confused, still trying to figure out reality from dream state. His father smelt of alcohol, which was pretty normal occurrence now. What wasn't normal was that he had come into his room at all. The relationship Van had with his three children had become distant to the point where the only time he seemed to speak to them was a mumbled hello when he used the bathroom in the morning. Or when he started drinking and predictably started yelling. Axel was thirteen years old and still trying to figure out the point of what he was shouting at. The television remote wasn't where he left it, shout, Axel's school books were on the table, shout, Cassandra was staring absently out the window again and the food was getting burnt, terrifying roar, Reno taking Kairi and Axel to the park until he calmed down, Van throwing a beer bottle at the door of their hasty retreat.

The next day, he realised his father wasn't coming back, and his dad was an asshole and a raging alcoholic who had torn Cassandra's mental health into tiny shreds and then left them to pick up the pieces. He finally understood what Van's words meant. His father's sins turned his life into a cesspool...

The next couple of years were destructive. His mother's sanity seemed to have snapped. They often found her in the shower mumbling and weeping, eyes wide and self-inflicted scratches up her arms that were bleeding. Her mood swings were unpredictable, one minute laughing at something on the television and suddenly throwing the remote at it in a rage, smashing the screen. She started forgetting to eat, to wake up for work, picking up Kairi from school, paying rent.  
>Axel's first criminal exploit: learning to forge Cassandra's signature to deposit the cheque Van left in the mailbox at the end of every month into her account.<p>

The cheque made Axel feel physically ill because it was a constant reminder that he was still around. Van worked a good job, and got paid well for a 'Midgar; the destroyed economy' citizen. A thousand dollars hardly paid for toilet paper to wipe his ass after the expenses were paid to keep them alive. It was the 'fuck you and try live with this for another twenty eight/twenty nine/thirty/thirty one days' cheque.

So they moved to a shittier suburb, where drugs were the local currency and break-ins taught you to hide valuables in your shoes or locked up in a safe.

When Axel turned fifteen, he placed a lock on his bedroom door.

His mum had stumbled in drunk, makeup smeared down her cheeks, a bottle of gin in one hand and a razor in the other.

_"Oh Axel," she murmured, grabbing his cheeks between claws, nails digging into his flesh. Tattoos were still slightly sore under his eyes. "You have black tears."_

_The blade of the razor pressed against his cheek, and fear trickled through his veins. "You're hurting me…"_

_She just stared at him. Her pupils were as large as marbles. "Your eyes…they're like your father's..."  
>The tip of the razor dug into his skin, and his breath came out in a rush and tasted slightly sour. His mum threw the bottle of gin against the wall, glass smashing, alcohol spreading across the rug and the smell permeating the air. She leant down and kissed him, open mouthed, something you wouldn't…shouldn't grace with your own child.<em>

_His shock caused the blade to slice his cheek as he jerked away, blood warm down his face._

"_Shhhh," she whispered, straddling his legs while he sat in his desk chair. The light of the computer washed an unnatural light across her face and made her look sickly, but he couldn't tell if it was just his own mind making her look chilling. The blade moved closer to his eye in her movement and glinted deadly silver._

"_Mum..." he hissed, finding breathing more difficult, cotton wool suddenly stuck in his throat. "Mum…please stop."_

_Her other hand clamped down on his crotch, her fingers grasping around him. "Your eyes are just like your father…like your father…like your father…" she continued her mantra, whispering at him, massaging him. And it was like his mind had disappeared in a hole he had painted there, the muscles in his body seizing up until he cramped._

_Reno saved him by crashing through the door and tearing her off his frozen self, the razor once again tearing into his skin and snapping him from his shock. He fell off the chair in haste, crashing onto the ground that caused pain to shoot up his spine, scuttling backwards like a crab until his back hit the solidness of the wall. Glass punctured into his hands from the broken bottle._

"_What are you doing?" Reno snarled. He suddenly smacked her hand against the wall hard, bones cracking. The blade fell from her grasp and she screamed and thrashed, her free fist cracking against his chest as he dragged her from his room and down the hall._

Cassandra had seemingly forgotten about what had happened. Lucky her. It was a poisonous memory that he would never forget. He got a job getting paid minimum wage of $5.63 an hour stacking shelves, camped out on Zexion's floor and stayed at school longer so he wouldn't have to go home. He started drinking heavily so he would forget. He started popping Xanax like skittles so he would forget. He tried heroin, cocaine, acid…anything…trying in mad desperation to forget that his body had started to react from his own mother's touches. He felt sick.

Reno left when he was sixteen.

"_I got a job in Kilika Island," he said as he shoved clothes in a sports bag. Kairi had run out of the house in an angry rage and Axel was high. Even in his stoned haze, his stomach dropped to his ankles. It was the worst betrayal._

"_I'll send you money," his brother continued._

_Axel tugged at his hair until it hurt. "What…what the fuck?"_

_He couldn't say what he needed to say he was so fucked. He felt Reno's hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at his brother. His grey eyes looked concerned._

"_Don't get stuck here, Axel. You're smart…fucking smart. You can do what-"  
>Axel whacked his hand off him in sudden anger. The only thing going through his head: Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.<em>

"_Look…we can find someone who can help mum."_

"_Fuck you Reno. We don't have any fucking money!" Axel clutched his head when it pounded. He couldn't see straight, the room tilting. He wanted to vomit. "And where are we going to go? The orphanages…child services are fucking…fucked! We'll be in worse shape than that fat lady who lives next door…" He laughed suddenly, a desperate sound until his eyes burned with unshed tears._

"_Axel-" Reno began._

"_You're exactly like Van, you selfish son of a bitch!"_

_Reno punched him hard in the face and left with more words. "Clean yourself up Axel. Get your shit straight! Make something of your life!"_

Like he needed more words.

He had this habit of talking when he wasn't home. When he was around his friends, he talked too much and smiled until his cheeks hurt, all flashing teeth and wild red hair that he couldn't control and toxic green eyes. People thought he looked like The Joker, but that was ok for him. He would do anything to become another person, so people would realise that there was something wrong with him.

He found his mum in the bathroom with her wrists cut from elbow to palm. He didn't know that a human body contained so much blood and it pooled around her. She had drawn smiley faces on the white tiles with it. The doctors patched her up, sent her to a psychiatrist who didn't give a shit and gave her a prescription for Cipralex.

It helped for a while, until Kairi stole the repeat prescriptions.

"_Mum needs them Kairi. Where is the prescription?" Axel said, sighing slightly. He was tired. He had been studying for what seemed like years for exams._

_Kairi twirled her hair around a finger, blowing a pink bubble from glossy lips. "I dunno Axel. Maybe mum threw it out."_

"_Don't fuck around! Just give me the fucking paper!"_

"_I need the money!" she cried._

_Axel grabbed her arm, soft flesh yielding under his grip until she grimaced. "Get a job! She needs the prescription, so just give it to me!"_

_She scoffed at him, "Give it to me? You want me to fuck you Axel?" her voice dropped, dripping with honey. "You want me to suck your dick, Axel? You must be very sexually frustrated…you never bring a girl home. But maybe you just want your own sister. Personally I find incest a little revolting."_

_He let her go like she stung him. Her eyes shone, blue like Cassandra's. She stepped away from him, smiling roguishly at him and rubbing her arm where his fingers had left red circles on her arm. His fists clenched._

"_What do you need money for?"_

"_Oh, things." She picked up her bag. "Maybe some condoms." Openly laughed at him, popped her gum, stepped away from him towards the door. She stopped, the screen door pushed ajar. "You know Axel, we're never getting out of this shit-hole. Why don't you just accept it and make the most of it."_

Words…

A 99 for his TER, and four universities to choose from, neurotically stacked in a pile on his desk and still unopened and three statements he stapled into his memory, probably for the rest of his life.

"_You have to pay for the sins I have created."_

"_You know Axel, we're never getting out of this shit-hole. Why don't you just accept it and make the most of it."_

"_Clean yourself up Axel. Get your shit straight! Make something of your life!"_

Guilt, despair and self-disgust.


	3. Chapter 3

Hey Guys, sorry for the late chapter. I've been busy doing things and stuff. Like Uni.

Enjoy.

...

Zexion's apartment was where demons could go and die. Or perhaps that is just how Axel felt about it. He didn't understand the appeal of painting every wall black, have every piece of furniture black, to even have towels black. Hell was probably more light and cheery. But it was where Axel's demons could go. Zexion and Axel understood each other in ways that Axel would never understand. They refused to share secrets or tell the stories that caused the scars. It was an unspoken agreement "I won't show you mine if you won't show me yours".

Zexion was a pseudo-emo fuck. Pseudo because he gave a shit about people and what people thought of him. He tried to hide it behind this façade of melodrama, bullshit and lack of enthusiasm and a fringe that had to cover half his face. Everyone had their masks.

His friend was sitting at his black desk in his black swivel chair fingering through Axel's letters.

"_Adaequatio Intellectus Nostri Cum Re?" _Zexion asked. "Sounds like a fucking cult."

"That's exactly what I said." Axel leant back on the couch on the other side of the room, taking another gulp of their traditional cheap beer that tasted close to piss.

"Great minds think alike, my friend," Zexion said, his only eye visible flashing blue, his equivalent of a smile. He saluted. "I think you should go there because it has 'cum' in the slogan, even though it's in this armpit of the world." Axel grinned and downed the last dregs of his beer while Zexion tossed the Midgar letter over his shoulder onto the black carpet. "I can't fucking believe you got offered a place in Bevelle AND Twilight Town!"

"So did you."

"Yeah, but I'm not an idiot."

The empty bottle went flying towards Zexion's head, missed and bounced along the desk before rolling to the ground, not breaking. You could run over the bottle in a monster truck and not break it.

"Careful. Or I'll make you scrub my toilet…using only your teeth."

"That's repulsive."

Zexion's phone went off, and Axel pushed himself up from the couch as his friend answered it with "Suck me off, Demyx!", and made his way to the kitchen. The apartment was extremely impersonal. There were no photographs, no pointless knickknacks, no artwork. What was in the apartment were only the things you needed. Why? Axel didn't know. Because it wasn't a home? It was a place to get drunk and high and forget.

He opened the fridge and eyed the merchandise. The second fridge trip. Enough cheap beer and comparably an expensive bottle of red wine with another pretentious label.

"How come everything that isn't cheap and isn't covered in age is considered pretentious?" he murmured.

"Huh?"

Axel looked up from the fridge, a beer in his hand, at Zexion standing by the door. "Nothing."

"We're having a party! Get your sequined party pants on, please."

...

Twelfth fridge visit. Or was it the thirty third? Axel had lost count after the third joint and a pill he found on the ground. And there was no more beer. Fuckers. The expensive wine was his.

The music was so loud that the glass in the windows was shaking. But no-one complained about Zexion's parties. His father was a lawyer, and seemed to have his greasy hand in everyone's pie to let Zexion do whatever he wanted. Like getting a scholarship to Twilight Town. And the waiving of all his fines he incurred over the years for drug possession and supplying alcohol to minors.

Zexion invited anyone and their followers. But there were the usuals. And it was exactly like highschool again. Everyone fell in some sort of category. The popular fucks, the bums and dope heads, the arty freaks. Olette and Namine were perched on the kitchen bench talking about their latest 'whatever the hell girls like them talked about'. It was never something Axel was interested in because they regarded themselves as hipsters. They forgot the ability to enjoy anything because they opt to argue against it, rebel without understanding why they're rebelling in the first place, and tried desperately to dress exactly like a homeless person because everything was too mainstream. Too cool for school. He mentally cringed at the term, but finding another definition was too mainstream anyway.

He escaped the kitchen before Olette grabbed him to try and kiss him again. Before she started speaking to him in bogus Mills and Boon speech about how mesmerising his eyes were. He was so drunk he probably would have vomited on her and would have enjoyed it more than have her grab at him. He never liked people grabbing at him…

Tidus and Cloud were slouched on the couch, laughing at Tifa, Yuna and Riku swaying drunkedly to some hard electric rave music. Zexion and Demyx were on the lying on the floor, their legs resting on the remaining space on the couch, playing Tekken on the widescreen TV upside down and yelling profanities at each other. There was Hayner, and Pence, and other fuckers who stole all the beer, and Axel with his three hundred dollar wine and his guilt. He didn't go home to check if Kairi had returned or if Cassandra was ok. He pushed past Hayner and pulled open the glass sliding door to the balcony, and breathed in the cold air.

Apart from the shit neighbourhood Zexion decided to move to, the apartment had a good view over Midgar. It was high enough to see over most of the rundown skyscrapers. And you could even see a couple of stars. The Shinra Electric Power Company emitted too much light, and it was an industrial town. Smoke and grit was pumped into the air and seemed to cover fucking everything in its poisonous crap. But if there was a wind, you could actually see and Midgar was temporarily not the armpit Zexion described it as.

"You have alcohol?"

Axel swayed violently, swinging around. He hadn't even heard the door open. And some boy was there, someone he had never met before.

"What are you, like thirteen? Get fucked man. Go home," Axel scowled, feeling a little put out that a kid had crept up on him. When you lived where he lived, you tended to keep your eyes and ears open for anything. Chances were you would get a knife poking into your back and a demand for your wallet.

The boy didn't even flinch. He just shrugged thin shoulders. "I live too far away just to strut home. And I'm eighteen. If you want my identification like a stalker bitch, I would stoop to show it to you if you give me some of that."

One of Axel's eyebrows rose. The kid probably came up to chest he was so short. It was interesting that he would be a smartarse to someone who was taller than him and had tattoos on his fucking _face_. Axel was thin, but he wasn't exactly harmless looking.

The boy had a ridiculous haircut that seemed to sweep to one side. It was also ridiculously blonde. It was probably natural, which was something Namine would have been jealous over because she bleached her hair to get the same colour. When you lived where he lived, you also tended to over-analyse people. He took note of the grey hoody, blue jeans and shoes. Trying to be cheap, and all designer. Pretentious.

He cracked the top of his wine, took a drink and then passed it to the boy.

The boy moved to the barrier of the balcony and turned to lean against it, and took a swig.

_He's beautiful_

It was a strange thought. But he was. All the angles, and the blonde, and the long fingers and arms. Everything seemed to fit perfectly. And that made Axel immediately hate him. Beautiful people didn't understand shit, because everything was more likely to be handed to them on a golden platter. Statistics even showed that if you're beautiful you were more likely to get better marks at school than if you were ugly and more likely to get a job.

_What is your flaw, pretty boy? You better have fucking boils over your body or I will throw you over the barrier…_

"What's your name?" the boy asked, reaching into his hoody and pulling out a pack of PJ gold.

"Axel."

"Roxas." Lit the cigarette and then offered one to Axel. Axel took one, and wished Roxas would now go away. "Are these yours?"

He was holding up Axel's four envelopes.


End file.
